EU Institute in Japan, Kansai (EUIJ-Kansai)International Workshop

Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan
Active and Healthy Ageing - Social and Economic Challenges

Edited by
Li-Mei Chen
Associate Professor, School of Human Welfare Studies
Kwansei Gakuin University&
Akira Ichikawa
Associate Professor, Institute for Industrial Research
Kwansei Gakuin University
1

EUIJ-Kansai International Workshop
Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan
Active and Healthy Ageing - Social and Economic Challenges
Dates

11th October 2012

Venue

The Library Hall, Kwansei Gakuin University

Organizer

EU Institute in Japan, Kansai (EUIJ, Kansai)

Co-hostEuropean Economic and Social Committee (EESC)
Institute for Industrial Research, Kwansei Gakuin University――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――The Report on EUIJ-Kansai International Workshop“Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan
Active and Healthy Ageing - Social and Economic Challenges”――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
28th February 2013
Edited by Li-Mei Chen
Akira Ichikawa――――――――――――――――――――
Publisher

Institute for Industrial Research, Kwansei Gakuin University
1-155 Uegahara Ichibancho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 662-8501 Japan
Tel +81-(0)798-54-6127

Fax +81-(0)798-54-6029

E-mail: euij-kansai@kwansei.ac.jp――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
2

Forward
Currently, the world is facing a rapidly ageing population at an unprecedented speed in
the history of mankind. While the EU has a growing older population, Asian countries
are also rapidly ageing with fewer children with Japan at the top in that respect.
Population ageing in Japan is faster than those of other developed countries with 65
years old and above accounting for 23% and 75 years old and above, or so-called “theold-old,” for 11% of the country’s total population in 2011, and by 2013, Japan expects aquarter of the population to be 65 years old and above, according to the Ministry ofInternal Affairs and Communications.
Since population ageing with declining birth rates result in depopulation, the EU
nations and Japan are paying more attention to issues such as pension, medical
benefits, and social welfare services. Furthermore, while the sustainability of the social
security system is tested, serious attention is paid to problems like the economic gap
between generations, employment of older adults, and increasing fear of financial
security among the young has furthered the non-payment of pension contributions andchildlessness of younger couples.
However, population ageing, decreasing birth rates, and depopulation are phenomena
which do not occur by surprise. Rather, it was a foreseeable future arising from ananalysis of the present demographic structure. Having the correct interpretation of thepresent, the future, and the impact of population ageing, it is possible for us to not only
come up with a pessimistic observation but also see a brighter future. Based on theseunderstandings, the members of the EESC and the researchers from Japan have cometogether to share the present situations of the EU and Japan and discuss what the
future holds in this respect.
In Session 1: “Potential Opportunities and Possibilities of an Ageing Society,”presenters shared their analyses of the population ageing in the EU and Japan and its
impact on the society and the individuals are presented. In Session 2: “Pension Systemin the EU and Japan,” highlight the pressing pension issues in the respective countries.
In Session 3: “Employment and Social Participation of Older Adults,” presenters
reported the role of information and computer technology (ICT) in filling the gap
between the generations in the EU and the employment and social participation ofolder Japanese. In the panel discussion which followed the above, lively discussions on
the future prospects of the ageing society took place, and new ideas and knowledge
were shared. As a member of the organizing committee, I hope this workshop will help
clear the path to a brighter future for the EU and Japan.
Finally, I would like to extend my great appreciation to the members of the EESC
participants and the Japanese researchers, and also to many individuals who
supported the event.
Takayuki Yamaguchi,
Vice-President EU Institute in Japan, Kansai
Professor, School of Business Administration,
Kwansei Gakuin University
3

EUIJ-Kansai International Workshop
Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan
Active and Healthy Ageing - Social and Economic Challenges
Contents
Opening Remarks
Takayuki Yamaguchi
Vice-President EU Institute in Japan, Kansai
Professor, School of Business Administration, Kwansei Gakuin University…………

p.6

Session 1: Potential Opportunities and Possibilities of an Ageing Society
Eve Päärendson
President of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan: Active and Healthy Ageing – Social andEconomic Challenges…………………………………………………………………………

p.7

Ayako Fujita
Professor, Dean of Psychology, Koshien University
Professor Emeritus, Osaka University

Beyond Asism to Productive Ageing in Super Aging Society Japan……………………

p.12

Session 2: Pension System in the EU and Japan
Krzysztof Pater
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

Challenges Facing European Pension Systems……………………………………………

p.17

Toshikatsu Oda
Professor, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University

Challenges facing Japanese Pension Systems………………………………………………

p.23

Session 3: Employment and Social Participation of Older Adults
Laure Batut
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

ICT and Active Ageing: Continuing True Life by Working, Connecting, Helping………

p.28

Kohki Harada
Associate Professor, College of Community and Human Services, Rikkyo University

The Systemic and Social Requirements of Social Enterprise’s Role in Supporting New
4

Possibilities for Mutual Support in an Ageing Society………………………………………

p.32

Panel Discussion
Chair: Li-Mei Chen
Associate Professor, School of Human Welfare Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University…

p.37

Closing Remarks
Akira Ichikawa
Associate Professor , Institute for Industrial Research, Kwansei Gakuin University…

p.48

Appendix：Power Point Presentations………………………………………………………

p.49

Lecturers’ Profiles…………………………………………………………………………………

p.75

5

Opening Remarks
Takayuki Yamaguchi
Vice-President EU Institute in Japan, Kansai
Professor, School of Business Administration, Kwansei Gakuin University
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I’m the Vice President of EUIJ-Kansai and Professor at
Kwansei Gakuin University. My name is Yamaguchi and please allow me to give you a few words
on the opening of this workshop. Today, I would like to thank the members of the European
Economic and Social Committee and the scholars who specialize in this field for becoming thepanelists. I extend my gratitude. As a member of the EUIJ-Kansai and also as a member ofKwansei Gakuin University I’m greatly honoured to have you here. Also, I would like to extend mythanks to the audience gathered here today. EUIJ-Kansai, which stands for EU Institute-Kansai,
was established in April 1, 2005, with the financial support from the European Commission as aconsortium between Kobe University, Osaka University, and Kwansei Gakuin University.
The mission of EUIJ-Kansai in one word is to strengthen the ties between Japan and the EU
through promotion and public relation activities concerning the EU in education and academic
research, and it is made up of three major pillars.
The first pillar is the activity to become an EU educational and academic centre. We, for example,
promote the exchanges with the EU academic institutions, promote scholarships to students, andinvite visiting professors. The second pillar is to collect and also provide information regarding the
EU. Therefore, with the work that we jointly do with the representatives of the EU in Japan, wecollect information regarding the EU and through our web sites, we provide information not only touniversities but to high schools, junior high schools, and elementary schools and also to the regional
communities. The third mission is our activities as the information centre for the EU. One part ofthis activity is to collect basic information about the EU, for example, on the history of the EU
integration, the system of the EU; and the economy, society and culture of the member states. Basedon that, we also provide public and business seminars with awareness in active ageing society.
Together with the EESC, we have asked the scholars who specialize in this field to have a discussion,
especially on ageing; and in the industrialized nations, low birth rate is a phenomenon that wecannot avoid passing for people like us who live in this present society. This is an urgent issue forus; I hope that the discussion today will help make a brighter future, and also hope that it will help
future activities and policies.
Last but not least, I would like to extend my thanks to all the members here today who have also
cooperated to help realize this seminar. Thank you so much.
6

Session 1: Potential Opportunities and Possibilities of an Ageing Society

Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan: Active and Healthy Ageing– Social and Economic Challenges
Eve Päärendson
President of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee
Vice President Yamaguchi, dear colleagues, dear students, distinguished guests, it’s a great
pleasure to be back here again, and on behalf of our small contact group let me thank you so muchfor helping us organize today’s workshop. Few words also about our Committee. Our Committee
is one of the oldest institutions in the EU, it’s more than 50 years old. It brings together toBrussels 344 members coming from 27 member states, from business organisations, trade unions,and many other important civil society organisations such as universities, farmers, consumer
organisations etc. The EESC is an official advisory body of the EU and participates actively in theforming of the EU policies and legislation. Today, we are here to talk about ageing and challenges
arising from the ageing society.
As we all know, declining fertility rates combined with increased life expectancy, all these leads us
to an ageing population. If we are having a look at the demographic situation in the EU, then we
can see that in the year ’27, there will be no more than 1.6 children for each woman in the
population. So the fertility rate for the EU, it’s only 1.6. For Japan it’s even lower, it’s 1.3, and we
can also see that this figure is well below the rate of replacing each generation. We can find thehighest fertility rates in Ireland and in France, the lowest in Latvia, Portugal, Hungary, but also
one of the biggest member countries, Germany, has quite low fertility birth rate.
With the current economic crisis that hit young people particularly hard, it also means bigger
economic insecurity for them and it also means that lots of young people can’t find jobs and they
postpone starting a family. So, it means that they will postpone also having children, and all this is
speeding even more demographic ageing in the EU.
Usually, women as we know live longer compared to men, but of course this gender gap is shrinking.
If we compare the gender gap in healthy life years, then we can see that this difference is quite
marginal, because women live longer but they spend 65% of their expected lifespan healthy andquality of life without any limitations, but for men this figure is even higher, for men it’s 5% higher.
So, men live a shorter life but the quality is better.
If we are having a look at the importance of older persons, meaning the persons aged 65 and plus in7

our population, then we can see that the best percentage of this group in the EU is around 17.4%.
And, in Japan, it’s even higher, it’s around 24%. But, clearly, we can see from this slide that ageing
is a serious issue for the EU and Japan.
Also, our median age is increasing and is expected to increase. The old age dependency ratios are
increasing as well, and are worsening quite rapidly. As we can see, by 2060 there will be – theshare of 65 plus to the working age population, which will reach 53.5%. What does this mean? Itmeans basically that in the EU there will be lesser than 2 persons of working age for each person
aged 65 plus.
Of course these are serious trends; first of all, it means increase of social expenditures. It is adanger to our sustainability of pension systems, healthcare, and institutional care. We can also see
the rapid growth of the persons aged 80 plus years. Actually, it is projected even to triple by 2060.
All these leads us to quite an unknown area because it means that the older age groups will becomelarger than the younger ones, and we have no historical experience how to deal with this.
What does this mean? As we know that the baby boom generation is retiring soon, some of them
they have already retired. So, it means that we need to find ways on how to encourage them tostay longer in the labour market. We also need to involve more migrant workers. If we arelooking at the statistics from 2008, immigration trends are declining, so the EU is no longer thenumber 1 destination for migrants. Of course, it might change again after the Arab Spring andothers.
We also can see that due to the economic crisis, as I mentioned earlier, the economic crisis wasparticularly a huge impact to young people, we can see that several persons are moving out from
Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, but also from Baltic countries. Where did they go? Some ofthem, they completely left Europe, but some of them had simply gone to other countries where morejobs are available. So this is like the emigration flow from job poor countries to job rich countries.
But this is internal pre-movement of labour and this is something what the EU usually encourages.
But of course we are talking today about ageing, so this is not good for these countries who arelosing their young generation. Even they go to other member countries, but still…
As I mentioned, our old age dependency ratios are going to worsen quite rapidly. If there is only
Germany and Italy where old age dependency ratio is higher than 30%, as you might remember for
EU, in general it was 25%, Germany and Italy this is even higher. But in 2030, all member states
except Ireland, old age dependency ratio will be more than 30%, so it’s quite a rapid development.
If we are having to look at age groups, what age groups are growing and what age groups are8particularly in the workforce are growing, then we can see that the only age groups of the workforce
that are getting bigger are those of ages 50 plus.
Talking about employment, then we can say of course it’s logical and natural that the highest
employment rate is for the prime age workforce. But, we also can see that the employment level,
employment rate for the older persons – meaning ages 55 to 64 –, it’s higher than younger persons.
The situation of young generation in the EU is really serious because the average unemployment foryoung people is more than 20%, 22% is the actual average, and in some countries it’s more than 50%.
But, as we emphasize in the EU we should find an inter-generational approach. Whenever we talkabout ageing society, we should also think in parallel about young people. Because after all, if welose this one generation of young people that means also that who is going to pay the support to thepension systems for another generation.
Employment rate - the situation in terms of employment rate varies a lot country by country. As
we can see employment rate in Sweden for instance is more than 70%, and it’s much lower in someother countries, so differences are huge, but also this creates situation where we can learn from theexperiences of other member states. The EU with its EU2020 strategy sets a target to achieve 75%
employment rate for people in ages 20 to 64 years old and equal employment rate for men andwomen.
But of course now the average is still lower. But as much as I know, Japan has been even more
ambitious and you have set your employment target to be at age 80, so it’s even much higher.
As I mentioned, one of the ways on how to solve the situation is to attract older people to remain
longer in the labour market. For this, of course we need to train them and re-train them, and weneed to invest in lifelong learning, mainly because innovation and technological change simply
takes place, and if we are looking how quickly and rapidly ICT is developing – it’s the easiest
example that everything is developing and you need to upgrade your skills in order to becompetitive and employable, simple as that.
Usually, the older you get, the less opportunities or offers exist to participate in training. If we arehaving a look at the figures, then older workers comparing to their younger colleagues in 2009 theage group – generally the age group 25 to 64, 9.2% of them participated in education and training.
But if you are looking at this older age group, 55 to 64, and then only 4.6% of those people
participated in training, so it’s quite a low figure.
But of course, also here, the situation is different, and we can see that in the Nordic countries, butalso the UK for instance can be categorized as countries with high participation rates in continuing
9training, and in these countries, more than 20% of population aged 25 to 64 participated in
education and training.
But when it comes to training, women for instance, they are more active in participating in training.
But, since businesses will face challenges to find skilled workers, so businesses increasingly develop
their own human capital reserves, so they train their people and invest also in older workers. The
training usually takes place in companies but also it can take place outside of the companies, andwhat is also an important element here is that very often our schools and universities, they areneither ready yet to host older people who would like to come to have training there.
If we compare our scenarios for the working age population, then we can see that the working age
population of the EU, comparing to other main economic blocks, is decreasing. These trends raiseseveral sensitive questions, how to attract investment, remain competitive and foster economic
growth with an ageing and shrinking working age population.
Of course, it’s a huge challenge for our pension systems, healthcare, and other services forincreasing number of older people, and how to enable older people to remain independent and active
citizens. So, these are the main questions that are relevant. But, as always, we shouldn’t look atageing not only as a problem but also to find ways on how to transform all these challenges related
to the ageing population into opportunities.
Talking about businesses, the main challenges, which will come to the businesses, are definitely theshortage of labour and skills, and regarding products and service development. Several surveys
carried out in the EU show that even despite of this, businesses are saying that ageing is a serious
issue in society, they haven’t adopted yet to their, for instance, market strategies accordingly, taking
into account the demographic change.

So they need to update, invent new services, products

targeted to older people and also renew their marketing strategies in order to be capable to sellmore to this consumer group.
Labour shortage, of course, if we compare small enterprises and big enterprises, then it’s much more
a bigger problem for SMEs in the future to find workers.
Opportunities - of course, there are lots of opportunities in terms of the Silver Economy, but I won’t
explain more because I know that my colleague Laure will explain some new opportunities related
to ICT development.
The main challenges coming from the demographic change are increasing imbalance between theworking population and the retired ones. This means that the average age of the workforce will
10

increase, which means for companies, their teams will have fewer young people and more migrant
workers in the future. This means that all teams in offices and in plants will be much morediversified.
Talking about numbers, our shortfall of workers will be 50 million by 2060, and there will be a hugelack of skills in the future. I won’t repeat the numbers, you can read all these, and we already havelack of skills. But in the future it’s really difficult to find math teachers or doctors or energy
experts.

Therefore, we need to increase productivity, we need to increase investments ininnovation and new technologies, and for companies it means that they need to adopt their humanresource policies accordingly to ageing workforce, and also think how to better their products andservices.
I have failed - I can see my time is up – I have covered the majority of things so I will just only see
what I did – maybe it’s worth from this slide – to emphasize that we need to review our tax andbenefit systems, because very often these systems doesn’t support, neither employers to hire older
people, neither – it’s not encouraging for employees to stay in labour market much longer. So,
these policies should be reviewed.
More investments in research and development to compensate the shortage of labour and also
training for companies are needed because it’s a new situation for companies. They need to be
trained on age management issues in order to help them to cope better with new situation. And
employment is not the only way to keep older people active; promoting entrepreneurship among oldpeople is also one way on having them remain active.
Thank you very much for your attention here. You can find the list of new opportunities. This
year in the European Union it’s the year for active ageing and solidarity between generations, andwe promote active ageing in employment, active participation in society by encouraging people toremain active as citizens, as volunteers and becoming more independent.
Thank you very much and I’m so sorry that I took at least two more minutes more than estimatedfor me. Domo arigato gozaimasu.

11Beyond Ageism to Productive Ageing in Super Aging Society Japan
Ayako Fujita
Professor, Dean of Psychology, Koshien University
Professor Emeritus, Osaka University
My name is Fujita from Koshien University. Today, I’m very honoured to have this opportunity topresent at this EUIJ-Kansai International Workshop. Today, the subject that I would like to talkabout is from ageism to productive ageing in the super ageing society in Japan. I will talk about
ageism in Japan, and then about productive ageing. I would also like to talk about the research
activities that I’m doing. First, about ageism towards Japanese older adults. I think in general,people consider that when you become aged you will quit your job and that it is quite natural thatyou will then be supported by your family and society.
Because of this image, ideas toward older persons are negative, which then causes the phenomenaof ageism. Ageism in our country is symbolized by the mandatory retirement system in Japan.
Companies with more than 30 employees, 93.5% of the companies have this system. Among thecompanies of larger size – for more than 1000 employees –this system is employed for 99.8% of thosecompanies, and 90% of them set age 60 to be the retirement age. But this year in August, thegovernment made a law that mandates companies to make employees work until 65 by the year
2025 to link with the pension system. But still, they do have this age limit of 65, which means thatthey would like to abolish every worker at the age of 65 without exceptions.
Then, you might question whether there are any older persons working in the labour market in
Japan? When we compare it with other countries, people working at ages 65 and older, 29% of themales and 16% of the females are working. So it seems that the number is quite high among theindustrialized nations. However, the reason why they are working, are mostly due to economic
reasons, so you can see that in the background, it’s really a social security issue.
But when we ask whether they want to have the mandatory retirement system abolished, only
17.6% of them would like to have it abolished. That means that the age limit system is quite
natural among the Japanese people’s mind. So, what I’m trying to say it’s not that the age limit
should be extended, that is not the point. I would like to change the idea that when people reach acertain age they should be excluded from the labour market.
As for ageism, I would like to introduce a study that I’m doing using the ageing quiz by Palmore tomeasure the scale of ageism, a survey done with elementary school, high school, junior high school,
and university students. For example, it asks the question of whether they agree that older people
12are being isolated, and if they say “yes” that means negative. If they agree that most of older
people have lots of savings, which is not correct, a point is added on the score of ageism.
This shows that if they answer incorrectly, which gives them a score, it indicates prejudice. Results
show that ageism rises as the grade levels become higher. School is a place that provides theeducation on the right ideas to prevent discrimination, but in reality, it goes the other way. So,
then I analysed the textbooks used in Japanese schools.
In Japanese elementary schools to high schools, they are using a text approved by the Ministry of
Education. In their textbooks, older people are portrayed as people who are vulnerable and in needfor help. And, as they get older they are repeatedly being taught at schools that people will become
weaker as they get older. So, I think that this creates a sense of discrimination among younger
people.
But look at this chart; when we compare the skills of the young and old in the labour market. Older
people who are very good or excellent are about 20% and good 50% and moderate 30%, and poor
performance is 10% or less,. Moreover, there is no difference between young people and older people.
Also, for the health status, 80% of older people consider that they are better than average, they don’t
have any problems in their daily life, and they don’t need support from others. In order to abolishageism, it is very important to change people’s idea just like to end the discrimination on women. It
is the same thing with ageing.
The US gerontologist Butler said in 1985 that to end ageism the concept of productive ageing
creates value in labour, in caregiving, and in social contribution activities that will make the life ofolder people happy. This concept applies to today’s Japan where we are having a super ageing
society with 23% of the population belonging to the older group. This is something that we can use
as a goal beyond active ageing society – to become the society of productive ageing.
The reason is because in 2060, 40% of the population will be ages 65 and over. It will become clearthat older people can contribute in a way that can create value in society, and as a result we can get
rid of ageism. So, today, I am talking about this topic on older adult’s labour, caregiving, and social
contribution raised by Mr. Butler, particularly on social contribution activities.
In Japan, there has been a rise in volunteer activities as a social contribution activity in 1995 when
there was earthquake in Kobe. Then, there was an earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku area of
eastern Japan, and many people participated as volunteers. If we look at older people over the ageof 60, they made up over 50% of the volunteers, so their existence in volunteerism is very important13

in Japan.
If we look at older people ages 65 and older, 24% are sick, 23% are working, and 10% are involved involunteer activities and the remaining 43% are doing activities such as hobby or healthmaintenance. Therefore, older people with productive ageing activities are about 33% of the older
population. However, when we say they are working, this is work after retirement age. Those
who contribute socially the average is about two or three times a month – about 10 hours. In orderto promote productive ageing, we have to create a better society for the 33%, and to spread
productive ageing for the remaining 43%.
An example of productive activities that has become very good for individuals and also for society,and was made into a movie and a book – maybe you already have heard – is a case in Kamikatsu
town in Tokushima Prefecture of Shikoku Island, where 47% of the population were older people.
Older people were excluded from roles in society, so they had so much time and were drinking, andbecame home-bound when they became sick.

Consequently, the medical fee was becoming afinancial burden for this town.
Then Mr. Yokoi became the agricultural director for this town and he came up with an idea ofpicking the leaves and selling them to Japanese restaurant. Four women started this activity andtogether they made big sales much more than they expected. Those people who started this leaf
picking business made wages, and now the business is computerized and they started to see morebusiness partners.

Today they have become a stock company.

So these older people at

Kamikatsu-cho, they not only get an income but also they became very healthy because they work inthe mountains to gather leaves and talk with their friends. By doing that, their medical fee perperson decreased to ¥200,000 or less (approximately 1640 Euros) each year which helped thefinancial status of the town. This is what is now known as the “Leaf Business.”
In Japan, it is quite natural to have the retirement age system in the labour market, but also people
have the wrong concept that older people are weak and need help. In order to get rid of these ideas,
it is necessary to change people’s awareness. So opportunities to educate older people are provided
by local authorities, NPOs, and private groups. I would like to give you an example case of acollege for the third age.
The Osaka Koreisha Dakigakko has a 30-year history of providing life-long learning for older people.
But it became difficult for the local government to continue providing financial support to thecollege for economic reasons, so the local government decided to close down this college. Then,older people themselves turned the college into a not-for profit organisation in order to continue thiscollege. These people - Nagai-san and Sato-san who are here today, are the ones who became the14leaders to make this college for the third age continue to this day.
Now, they have a one-year course with 1500 people attending lectures on about 30 or more subjects.
I have been involved in research studies about them for more than 30 years, and I can see that there
has been a lot of change, historically. In the beginning, the local government was putting in ¥100
million (0.8 million Euros) but older people themselves formed an NPO to continue the college andare now in charge of organizing the college. I think this is one of the examples of productive ageing
as recommended by Butler.
As we can see in this chart, we see 90% of the older people in this study are willing to have a positive
outlook on life. They do have a strong sense that they want to have a positive outlook on life. But
they don’t know what specifically they should do in order to have a positive life. These are thepeople who have come to this college of the third age.
In the US, Seligman, a psychologist, said that self-satisfaction would easily disappear but
satisfaction gained by contributing to others lasts longer. So, the awareness of productive ageing isimportant. What should be done is that the people who attend this college know what to do, andthat they are given a new sense of value.
So I made this scale to see the tendency of productive ageing. At one end, the scale shows personal
satisfaction and the other end shows social contribution. By looking at this scale, the ranking ofproductive ageing can be divided into five levels.

The results verify that people can be very

optimistic by engaging in activities which give them a sense of contribution to society.
When they just entered the college, older adult participants in my study whom I labelled as“innovators” were only about 1.1% of the group. But at the time they graduated, the “innovators”
group increased to 10.4% and the “early adaptors” group was originally 8.4% but this group also
grew to 15.7%. The group of older adults who was labelled as “early majorities” was 25.2%, andlater they grew to 28.8%.
In total, the increase was from 33.6% up to 54.9%, so the increase in positive awareness was seen forabout 20%. In the overall region, we see that about 50% were at the beginning stages, in otherwords, the majority of those people who enter the college for the third age initially has a lower
tendency about the productive ageing.
They come here searching for something but mainly, they are initially here for their own personal
satisfaction. But through the 1-year study, they create a new sense of value. Since the college isbeing managed by the older adults themselves, the organizers become a model for other students
15who come here and thus encourage them, too, to adopt a new sense of value.
This is a newspaper article from last month’s Yomiuri Newspaper. You can see that this article
talks about the productive tendency of older people. It says how much they are in demand and by
engaging in productive activities they can gain a healthier mind and body. Through these results, I
believe that ageism can disappear. This concludes my presentation. Thank you very much.

16

Session 2: Pension System in the EU and Japan

Challenges Facing European Pension Systems
Krzysztof Pater
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to present to you some challenges facing

European pension systems. First of all I will present some demographic facts as it’s important tohave in mind how it is structured. Next, a few words about the two documents presented by theEuropean Commission regarding the pensions in Europe, so-called Green Paper and White Paperon pensions, and finally main trends existing in pension reforms.
First of all, let’s have a look at the European Union labour market. The problem of so-called exit
age when really people are leaving the labour market.
On this screen you can see how many differences exist in European Union. Generally speaking we
can observe the growing tendency between 2001 and 2008. However, still there are significant
differences between some member states. At the moment, we can see that the highest rank is in
the Netherlands and Sweden and lowest are even in the countries which are not presented in thisscreen. The average for the European Union you have on this screen is presented.
The number of tendencies which can be observed in the labour market is the problem of theemployment of people, so-called older people from 55 up to 64 age group. On one hand, we have
Sweden where the employment rate of this age group is above 70%. On the other hand, we have
Malta with slightly above 30% and Poland with 34% and many countries between. So we see on
one hand reserves existing in the European Union and on the other hand it shows the real problems
in this system.
The problem of unemployment rate is also in this old age group between 55 up to 64. On thisscreen, you can see the tendency for some European Union member states. This green line shows
Germany, a country where we can observe a significant decrease of unemployment level in this old
age group. On the other hand, the blue colour shows the average for the European Union, and theincrease which we can observe in many member states since 2008 as the crisis started at this time.
Another problem is the problem of unemployment rates in the European Union among young people.
In this field, we observe really significant differences between various member states. On one
hand, we have so-called crisis countries as Spain or Greece where unemployment level among young17

people achieves almost 50%.

On the other hand, we have very stable countries such as the

Netherlands, Austria or Germany, where unemployment level among young people comes to around
10%. So, again, significant differences exist and, of course, we know that young people are paying
contributions when they are employed. So it has an impact on the total situation of the pension
system.
Let’s have a look at how the demographic balance will appear comparing with the year 2008
showing old age dependency ratio - the relation between the number of population over 65 tonumber of people in so-called productive age between 15 and 64. On this screen, we can see how
the situation is changing since 1991 up to 2010. We see the growing dependency ratio in all
member states on one hand, on the other hand the differences which were shown also previously by
Ms. Eve Päärendson.
Median age again shows – I will show you in other chart presenting the differences, current
differences. If you have a look at this chart you can see that on one hand Ireland, the median age
is slightly below 35 and on the other hand, Germany around 10 years higher. Again, the European
Union cannot be treated as a kind of unity when we talk about demographic situation and pension
systems because we have many real trend differences among the member states.
Now have a look on demographic balance - 2008 and 2060. A projection on what will happen. On
one hand, we have two examples, Germany and Poland. You can see that because of low fertility
rate, low number of births, increasing number of deaths, and small migration, the total populationin this country will significantly drop down. On the other hand, because of, let’s say not so bad atleast or positive fertility rate, we can expect the increased number of population in such countries as
France and the United Kingdom. Let’s have a look also on the third group, Italy and Spain. Thiscountry will be able to keep the current population number only because of high immigration rate.
Life expectancy is changing, and generally speaking, life expectancy is growing. We can expectthat now the life expectancy for men as an average in European Union is 75. In 2060, we can
expect 84. For women, now it’s 81.5. In 2060, we can expect 89, very high life expectancy. Of
course, there are differences between member states which we can see on this chart.
Let’s have a look at some demographic trends, what we can observe? First of all, baby boomers arein their 60s; they are people born after the Second World War. Now, the number of people over 60
is rising by 2 million every year in the total European Union. Population aged from 20 to 59 starts
shrinking and what can be observed also on the previous chart, life expectancy gap between men
and women is getting smaller.
18Now please have a look on the overview of European population. In 2008, this is typical structureof the society. But what will happen in 2060? A different situation. We will not observe a typicalpyramid, as it was 20 or 30 years ago. Step by step everything is changing and the red colour
shows the most frequent cohorts. You can see the most frequent cohort for women will be from 70
to 74 years old in 2060.
As I have mentioned, the European Commission started to think about pensions. In July 2010, theGreen Paper document presenting some ideas, some concepts was published by the European
Commission.

After getting opinions from various institution member states, civil society

organisations, so-called White Paper was published in February of 2012.
Generally speaking, pension systems are the responsibility of the member states. The European
Commission can only point out some tendencies, problems, and propose solutions but have nodecision power.
I would like to present to you some comments which were adopted in my Committee as representing
the society – people living in the European Union – towards these proposals. It’s important thatbeyond various interests existing in our Committee, we managed to adopt this opinion by the great
majority giving consensus.
First, I underline that pension system reforms is a matter decided at national level. No specific
type of reform should be promoted or penalized by the European Union regulations. Despite thediversity of systems pay-as-you-go system, pay-as-you-go mandatory schemes must continue to playa fundamental role. Pay-as-you-go system is the system when you pay the current contributions to
pay current pensions.
Also, to raise the effective retirement age up to the existing legal retirement age is a priority. We
observe the difference between a real retirement age and the legal retirement age, so this gap
should be reduced. Bonus systems encouraging workers to continue working beyond the legal
retirement age has to be introduced.
Finally, a directive model for a flexible transition from work to retirement must be developed.
Some people won't or many people don’t want to change their life immediately on one day full time
employment, on the next day nothing. They just want to have flexible way to full retirement andsuch a way should be provided. Merely raising the legal retirement age will not solve the problem
as I would like to refer to this chart presenting the employment level in the group 55 to 64, averageis around 50% in the EU, it’s not the solution only to increase the retirement age. It’s necessary tohave a package of tools.
19Retirement age, lower wages, longer parental breaks, higher risk of long term unemployment put
women at higher risk of poverty as value of future pension depends on the whole life working
activity. Of course, pensions are not a reward but rather a form of different versions of our savings.
We also underline that European citizen’s level of financial literacy with regard to pension products
or widely understood financial products should be raised by offering education to all age groups, notonly in the school level, and, of course, EU methodology on pension statistics needs to be developed.
Pension reforms are challenging. We know about it. Why? First of all, I can say that citizens
don’t accept or fully understand changes. People don’t want to listen about not so good prospects.
They believe that their life, if it’s going to change will be changed in the positive way. If somebody
tells them about these numbers, even if they understand that the future would not be so good theyinternally don’t accept it. On the other hand, we have also a bad tendency among politicians topostpone a reform, to leave problems for the next government, governments for the next generations.
All the time politicians are before an election, if not to the parliament, then presidential election,
local authorities election and don’t want to take risky measures. Suddenly it happens to be toolate.
Key questions which should be taken into account when talking about pension reforms. First, how
to divide up increases in longevity between working period and leisure time or pension time? How
to share the costs of longer lives between and within generations? To assure that each generation
is honest towards each other, and to achieve a balance between the number of working andretirement years. If we talk about the European Union pension systems, we can distinguish thefollowing main objectives:
First of all, systems have to provide adequate retirement incomes. Systems must provide financial
sustainability. People at retirement age have no option. If their pensions are decreased, they
have no option.

They cannot earn more money because their ability to work is significantly

decreased.
Reforms must be based if it is only possible on the basis of social consensus, and of course,
transparency must be provided; transparency during implementation of reforms as well as theoperation of a system. We can observe the following major trends in the reforms.
First, hybrid designs or mixture of methods of financing. The sole methodology, pay-as-you-go
system is in many countries is not the only one solution. The funded components are added andself-balancing mechanism between liabilities and revenues is often implemented.
What are the most popular changes in the pension systems? First of all, when calculating pension,
20

having in mind contribution period, instead of a concept of best years taking into account tocalculate the future pension, the whole working period is taken into account.
Next, there is extended qualifying period for getting a minimum pension. So, higher requirements
to get minimum pension in the system are implemented.
Equal pension age for women and men. Some member states have still differences. So this issomething what ought to be provided equally.

Of course increased pensionable age andstrengthening bonus-malus system aimed at prolonging working activity, too, if it is only possible.
Pre-funding as a policy response to the demographic challenge is the tool often used. New defined
contribution schemes, either mandatory or voluntary are sometimes offered by companies.
Expansion of existing occupational schemes is the tool in many member states and creation ofreserve funds to reduce the impact of the flow of level between various cohorts on the financial
sustainability of pension systems.
On this chart, I would like to show you the increasing role of funded schemes in the European Union.
The blue point shows the situation in 2006. As you can see, zero level in many member states.
But what will happen in 2046? Significant increase in the share of funded schemes in the future
pensions. That’s very important tendency.
Coming almost to the end, the pension system can observe two periods:

Period when thecontributions are paid and finally the period when the benefits are paid. Of course, in both periods
it’s necessary to keep the real value of money when contributions are paid, but of course having in
mind that they are paid during long term whereas in average 40 or more years. Various systems
are used to keeping their real value. Either wages index, price index or a mixture, partly share ofwages index, or partly share of prices index.
In the case of indexation of pensions, to keep their value during the period when they are paid,
wages index is used but it’s almost closed because of demographic tendencies it’s not possible to keep
it any longer, sometimes mixed prices and wages index, sometimes prices, sometimes discretionary
which does not provide stability for pensioners and sometimes progressive providing higher
increase of pensions for those who get smaller pensions.
On this chart, you can see one thing. Having in mind this tendency, the short periods, 1, 2, or 3
years of lack of activity on the labour market will influence the value of future pensions in various
member states.
21

My final slide is conclusions. Of course, further pensions are needed in member states. I can say
in the majority of the European Union member states. In some member states it’s an urgent
matter, in some member states it’s worth to implement them to provide – to be honest to our society– sooner than later. Lessons learned from the crisis, of course, have to be taken into account, andfinally, pension systems must be based on synergies between various policies. Thank you verymuch for your attention.

22

Challenges facing Japanese Pension Systems
Toshikatsu Oda
Professor, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University
Thank you for the introduction. I think people are now willing to have a break but please endurewith me while I make my presentation. I would like to talk about the challenges facing Japanesepension system. Professor Pater has just given us the idea about the EU. So I would like to talkabout the Japanese system.
Since the time is limited I will start by saying the conclusion. I can say that it’s very difficult
situation for the Japanese pension system. There are no bright prospects. I don’t know where to
start, but since we have young people in the audience here, I would like to start talking about theJapanese pension system. All the members of Japan have compulsory universal coverage. Thatis the Japanese system from 1961 up to today. The system is pay-as-you-go scheme, so the people’s
payment – from those who are working – is used for the current older people and it is made up of
three tier system.
On the very bottom, we have the basic pension and then we have the employee’s pension, and themutual aid association pension. And on top of that, there are the corporate employees’ funds andothers. Japan has adopted this system quite early and at the beginning it was okay until we had
the issue of the AIJ’s pension fund. This was a recent scandal involving an alleged fraud involving
the loss of the pension fund entrusted to the firm, AIJ. Now, this three-tier system is being
endangered.
The time necessary to receive the pension is for 25 years. I think, compared to other countries,that the number of pension years for eligibility is quite a long time. Next, the pensionable age forbasic pension is at the age of 65. The employee’s pension currently can be provided at age 60, but
this up to the year 2025. This will gradually be moved up to age 65. So that means that most of
the people have no choice but will have to work until the age of 65. As for the premium of the basic
pension per person is, f¥14,980 per month but after the year 2017, this will be raised up to ¥16,900(147 Euros) in employees’ pension. This is taken from the salary, currently at 15.7%, but after theyear 2017, this will be 18.3%. Since they are shared equally by the employee and the employer, it’s
about 10% and the employees will have to pay out of their salaries. And employee’s pension arebeing shared between the employees and employers but for the basic pension is not shared. So,
half of the basic pension is being paid by the government which is becoming a huge amount these
days.
23

Then the benefit, in regards to how much can be expected from the basic pension. For 40 years, it’s
¥65,541 (570 Euros) per month and, of course, if the years contributed are less, the benefit will also
decrease. For example, I have paid for only 36 years, so I am ineligible to receive this maximum
amount that the average salaried workers can receive in benefits.

For a couple, it is about¥230,900 (2011 Euros) per month. This is the amount that is paid right now for a couple. And thetotal amount of pension paid in Japan is ¥51.13 trillion (420 billion Euros).
If you look at this chart, this is quite a busy chart. But on the left, you will see in pink colour: byage, population, and household – the percentage of the pension comprising income of older adults isabout 70%. On the right hand chart, the colour pink shows the ratio of the older population who isdependent only on the pension benefit. More than 70% are in these households. We can see thatthe pension system itself is really becoming important since the majority of the older population
cannot maintain their life without the pension. They ought to think about the future and how to
support their life, since more than 70% are to be dependent on the public pension.
After the age of 40, people’s expectations become higher than the people in the younger generationgroup. So that means the public pension system is viewed as a system indispensable to support
older people.

But this is not only important for the older population, it benefits the younger

generation, too. For example, because of the pension system, the working population is freed fromthe duty of supporting their parents. When the parents get older, and if there is no pension system,
they will have to rely on the children. But having this system frees them from this duty. For thecompanies, this system enables employees to concentrate on their work.

Companies which don’t

have this system, and even for the public officers they will need to do a second job as a part time job.
Sometimes they can make more money by doing that work. So they may be more likely to look forother jobs on the side.
But with this pension system, the employees don’t have to worry about having a second job. This
also supports the consumption of older people, because if they have enough money to spend, they
will spend the money. So many products are purchased by older adults. The other important
thing is that this ensures stability of society and economy. The pension system is very important,of course, not only to support the older generation but also to stabilize the society as a whole.
But there are many challenges facing this system. One is the low birth rate and the consequential
population decrease.

This means that the balance is changing between those who pay thepremium and those who get the benefits. in other words, this means that the working population
will have more burden to pay the pension premiums and this is already evident in the population
trends. The colour green shows that there were more pension benefits for ages 65 and older andthe orange are the working-age people who will be getting less. As you can see here, the burden is24becoming heavier, putting more weight on the working age population, and the younger the
population gets, the benefits become smaller and smaller in ratio.
This shows the trend of the total population in Japan. Right now we are at the peak. Now there
are 128 million. I think it’s quite populated now but in 2060 this will be much less, about 86.74
million. In 100 years, in 2110 there will be only 42.86 million. I think this will be fewer than the
population in today’s Germany or France. If this continues, by 1500 years later there will be only
one population in Japan. That means that Japan will no longer exist.
As we see, the increase of old age and the decrease of the labour population are significant. It took
me a long time to make this slide. I think this is a major part of today’s session. Please remember
this part very well.
In the left picture, many people were supporting one older person. But right now or in the near
future, three people will have to support one person, which is called a “cavalry” type in Japan. It will
happen in 2050, this is not too far away in the future. One person will have to support 1.2 people
and it’s like Saori Yoshida’s style, the gold medallist in wrestling at the Olympic Games who carried
her coach alone on her shoulders. Maybe she is capable of carrying three people because she hasmuch power, but you can see how this is changing in Japan.
This was the idea of young government officials in Japan. This picture explains how difficult it isgoing to be.
Another point is the recession of the economy. Deflation is continuing for a long time and thus theincome is decreasing. We were also struck by the earthquake in 2011. In order to sustain the
post-earthquake economy, there was an idea that the government workers’ salary should be reduced.
Since I also work for a national university my salary was reduced by 7.8%, and prior to that I
already taken a reduction in my salary.
Looking back in the past 10 years, my salary has always been going down, and based on that salary,
the pension is calculated. So when people my age retire and start receiving pension, I think thebenefits are in a miserable state. This is also the cause of the problem of the working poor as thefund decreases for the pension. There are about ¥100 trillion (822 billion Euros) of the basepension fund but managing the reserve has not been well. And thus, the pension funds reserve itself
is decreasing.
Also because of the economic recession, the payment rate of insurance premium is decreasing. For
example, in 2011, only half of the people were paying the premium for the basic pension. But the25

government says that having a low percentage of payment is not going to be a problem, since we
don’t have to pay the benefit for those people who are not paying the insurance. But in the future
there will be people, who will not be able to receive the benefit. So this will be a big issue in the
future.
For the people who are working right now, the reliability on the basic pension is decreasing. People
are feeling a sense of uneasiness about the future. When we look at the system, you can see thatabout 70% of the working population is saying that they are not sure whether the public pension
benefit will be enough for them at old age.
Also, there is a generation equity debate. This is showing the ratio between the amount thatpeople pay for the pension and the amount that they receive. There is a difference by generations.
For those who are currently receiving, the amount they paid compared to the benefits they receive isabout five or six times more the amount they paid as a premium. But for the future generation, forthose who paid, the amount of benefit they receive will be even less but this is for the couples.
But if we look at each individual, this is the result of the research for those people in the 1950s thatthe amount they will receive in the lifetime will be more than the amount they pay as a premium.
But the generation after that, the amount they pay will be much more than the amount they receive
as a benefit.
This is the net benefit. As you could see in this chart, the net benefit rates are all minuses. Thisis an issue involving different generations. There are many issues here and so this led to what is
now being talked a lot about – the comprehensive reform in the social security and taxation system.
There are four points I would like to talk on the pension reform. We have to make a new system.
I have underlined here about having a single system because now there are different categories
within the system. This ought to be made into one, and it also needs to raise the starting age whenpeople can receive pension benefits.

These are being are considered right now.

But

simultaneously, operations must be rationalized to solve and to prevent the problems caused bycareless operations by the social insurance agencies.
Next, where are the revenue resources for the reform coming from? On the left bar chart, you can
see the amount of premium. The revenues in premiums are limited but the expenditures and thegovernment debt continue to grow. There is an idea to increase the current 5% consumption tax.
Since my time is limited right now, I would ask you to please read the leaflet circulated to you.
There are people who still say it is not enough even if the consumption tax rate is raised from 5% up
to 10%. Maybe we need to raise this up to 20%. The expected influence of rise in consumption tax
26

on households is estimated by the government. This slide is showing the relationship between
people’s income and how much they will have to pay more if the consumption tax was to be raised.
The reform is asking for the burden by every single person and there should be conditions orpresuppositions to make this system work. I have listed here eight of those presuppositions orconditions. For example, the pension contributions are absolutely fewer than the recipients. The
current conditions were not expected as what was planned in the beginning because of the change inthe population, the economic depression, and the low fertility rate.

In return of the affluent

lifestyle we have today, this is the consequence we have gained. This is something that we cannot
avoid.
If we are to continue this affluent lifestyle, this problem is unavoidable with depopulation. As forthe economic activities, we cannot expect the big growth that we had in the past to happen again.
So it is very difficult to find the basic or drastic way to solve this problem and shown by themeasures that were taken up to now – for example, raising the age to receive the benefit and so on –even a child could come up with those ideas.
I have also given a challenging idea in my research which was funded by the Ministry of Educationin Japan. Normally in Japan, the universities are 4 years. You have many days off and also it’seasy to get the credits. I made a challenging suggestion of how this can be changed to benefit the
tax and the premium revenues. ¥40 million or 30 million (0.2~0.3 million Euros) a year can becontributed for example by reducing the year attended at the university. The parent’s economic
burden will be lessened and students can participate in the labour market earlier. I don’t think
many people were impressed by this idea, but this is a suggestion.

So, now we have somequestions.
When we make a reform on the pension system there is a question; how long can we or must wework? There were many discussions on that. Well, as long as you can work maybe you would
prefer to work. And as long as you are healthy enough and have a capacity and skills to do that,maybe you can continue working or else, you won't be able to enjoy the late life that you can enjoy inaffluence.
If we are to continue with the measures taken right now, we will have to consider how we should use
the financial budget by the government. We have to think of how we ought to allocate the budget.
And if we just try to change the pension system, it alone does not solve any problem for the pension.
So what we have to think right now is to consider maintaining the peace and safety of the world.
Without having peace and safety, the pension reform cannot move forward. Thank you so much.
27

Session 3: Employment and Social Participation of Older Adults

ICT and Active Ageing: Continuing True Life by Working, Connecting, Helping
Laure Batut
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee
Thank you.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I’m very pleased to come to you thisyear and as my two colleagues have very well set up the scheme for the EU countries, I would like tocome up to a special point of view as it has been said on the role of the ICT and the active ageing.
Talking about employment, the OECD established that the main reasons of the rising inequalities
in the EU come from ICT. ICT benefits mainly the majority of high skilled workers and indeed
after retirement inequalities remain.
The purpose is to see how to make age a chance rather than a burden in a win-win context for all
and not winners take all. In the newest way of life we live now, I mean in an ICT society, it could
contribute for employment for creation of wealth, and for well-being under certain conditions. I
would like to notice that the Japanese version will be available as a digital version and begin withmy slides to show you that if you just think a minute, to live is just to grow older, the only differenceis that there are different needs between youngest and oldest. That means ageing is a global
challenge – it’s not only about a category of people, it’s a global challenge.
The challenge of ageing obviously has been more lightened by the crisis, and we have to ask
ourselves not to young people and separately to old people, but if older people could be a chance, weneed to ask ourselves how we can re-orient our whole economy from this starting point.
A holistic approach should not be defined only by salaried work; it should primarily enable people toachieve empowerment, well-being, and involvement in society. We have here, but my colleagues aswell have spoken about that, the increase in number of old workers in the EU in few years will befrom 15% now to 23%, and this is it’s only about workers. So society has to adjust itself.
We know that both the supply of jobs for older workers should increase for a lot of reasons, but also
for the demand of jobs. Not only because people will choose to remain at work, but obviously
because of the pressure, pension cuts, increasing precarity and poverty. That means they will becompelled to stay at work if they could have jobs.
What could help in such society? We had reflections in our Committee on the role of ICT. You28

know that now ICT are everywhere, maybe more in Japan than in Europe, and it could be a tool forchange to bring jobs, security and healthcare for people.
But older workers face obstacles in ICT, because of working conditions, age discrimination, andtraining is not so easy. Universities in Europe are becoming more and more expensive especially for
women because they face a higher rate of unemployment and poverty. In Europe, when we talkabout poverty, it is first about poverty among women. Public budgets also in all of our countries
are under pressure and specific barriers to ICT compel people to make their own “revolution.” They
haven’t been taught on digital literacy, they need to be secured to use internet, and to have adapted
hard and software.
Despite the fact that there are, as older people, a resource of macro-economic demand, a resource ofknowledge, a resource of employment, a resource for social economy sector, that means in European
NGOs more or less. For instance in your country the Farmers’ Cooperative, in Europe it is becalled Social Economy Sector.

Despite the fact that ICT could facilitate their life, they face

obstacles and can’t enter the ICT society.
If we could tackle these barriers, it will boost employment and growth.
We have three main topics on which to act. Infrastructure; in Europe, broadband high-speed andwi-fi are not well-distributed. We remain with islands of no distribution. We have to facilitate
accessibility to hard and software, older people have never – some of them have never touched any
computer, they don’t know how to use it. As you know, a lot of commands are in English, so weneed to facilitate their entering. What is very important for us in Europe is building the trust inthemselves; in the use of ICT, we have, for instance, e-signature, e-commerce, and e-dispute which
secure rights for internet users, to guarantee privacy and data protection. They are very importantfor us.
The last point, universal access to inclusive e-education. We are aware that we have to begin now
for the next generation.

The Committee estimates that it begins too late in several of ourcountries.
Technologies and education, as you can see, the blue line on the slide shows how many people indifferent stages of education are using ICT, from the elementary level on the top to the university
level at the bottom. Obviously, more well-educated you are, the more you will use the ICT.
For one, ICT could empower active seniors who want to continue working. They can use it if they
are trained to look for jobs in teleworking. It allows them to do their jobs more outside the familiar
29

office. Teleworking may alleviate physical and mental constraints associated with working in an
office because it allows workers to reconcile work and family life. But we must bear in mind thatbridging the gaps in the lack of basic digital literacy, as I said, is needed to achieve full use of an ICT
learning environment, especially after retirement.
In occupation, you always can see in the blue line in the slide, that the percentage of people using
ICT – meaning from low skilled manual to high skilled clerical –it’s quite the same for education.
The need for skills and qualification is always there during working life and after working life, too.
It’s really a pre-requisite for inclusion and for well-being.
The ICT in the whole society is an opportunity for transfer of knowledge and to makeinter-generational exchange. It could be in companies and in private life as well, a communicationfrom old to young and young to old people. Of course, it will be easier if old workers themselves orold citizens themselves are able to use digital technology. So, lifelong learning and e-skills are
acknowledged to be essential for survival, helping people to remain at work, to find other jobs, andto develop solidarity between generations.
Second point, ICT could help inactive older people remain included. As I said at the beginning, we
would like to have a holistic approach. Silver Economy could be enhanced by the internet, andautomated payments. It requires digital skills for the older adults. There needs to be trust in
dematerialised transaction. And as I quoted, ICT is also important for inactive older people. It is an
important tool to keep in touch with family and friends, as soon as you are less and less mobile, ICT
could help you to maintain contact.
The third point ICT can help is at the end of your life when you enter dependent old age on one hand,and on the other hand, for the carers, it could be an opportunity to create jobs.
We saw yesterday in another workshop a lot of your high level professors and representatives ofscientific universities have a lot of solutions about that, which obviously have also createdemployment for people and other ways to help.
The opportunity for action could be enormous, if well managed, old age could be a gold mine for job
creation, growth, and also opportunities for business and workers, but it has to be well-managed.
It could enhance national GDP and help older people for their purchase power, the sustainability forsocial security system and insurances, and it would be a reorientation of economy. But that means
we need political trends and political will to reorient the economy in that way, and that’s not done inEurope. We try to have strong action for the EU Commission, and we had lots of opinions voted by30

our Committee going in that way –to make a win-win situation. We are aware of that; if not,inequalities should dramatically increase in Europe.
We have, as you may know, a strong European Trade Union Confederation and I have put in the filethe position, as Krzysztof said before, this Confederation is in favour of employees remaining at
work until the mandatory retirement legal age first, and then inter-generational solidarity could bemaintained.
In that way, we also find again ICT to answer the needs of age. Our Committee considered it as afundamental right to access its infrastructure and digital tools. E-inclusion for older people means
to take ownership of contents of all digital media, not only about having a computer and to use it.
E-inclusion requires a global approach and as I said, we had stated in our opinions that after thecompulsory retirement age, people have to choose whether they want to stay at work on a voluntarybasis. ICT are tools which assist for greater inclusion.
My concluding remarks are that we are facing now a depression and recession that should not be asocial model for the future. We have to think ahead, and to re-think and reorient our economic andsocial model for the future. As Professor Oda said just earlier, we have to ask ourselves if it isreally the human destiny to work from birth to death, and if not, how to organize our life so that
economic and social inequalities reflecting the unequal access to ICT could be tackled.
Life is for yourself first. Thank you for your attention.
I would like to also thank Kwansei-Gakuin professors to welcome us in this wonderful place, thank
you.

31

The Systemic and Social Requirements of Social Enterprise’s Role in Supporting New Possibilities
for Mutual Support in an Ageing Society
Kohki Harada
Associate Professor, College of Community and Human Services, Rikkyo University
Hello, my name is Harada from Rikkyo University and thank you very much for inviting me today.
I am an expert in administrations and local municipality and especially with regard to the third
sector. The third sector is what I am doing research in, and in relation to that I have done someresearch on social enterprises.
In that process, I have come to know about Work Integration Social Enterprise and this is very
important when we consider the balance between systemic and social requirements of social
enterprise’s role.
Today, I would like to talk about the possibility and the potential of WISE, the Working Integration
Social Enterprise, in relation to the issue of ageing society. So this WISE, as I will call it, deals
with persons with disabilities and also older people, single mothers, and homeless people who are
excluded from the general labour market.
In Japan, in reality, I have come to learn that WISE is not a corporation, so it is unlike the ones inDenmark, France or Italy. So, WISE is not recognized socially; therefore it was very difficult forme to do any survey. But, this entity does exist for a long time for labourers who are excluded fromthe society and I wanted to do some comparison study with the Japanese WISE and such similar
entities abroad.
As I will be talking later on the senior ventures targeting the senior people, I have done some survey
but it wasn’t very successful. As Professor Fujita also has mentioned, even if we call the people
older adults, there are different types of older people. For example, there are people who have highincome, looking at their economic standard; this is ¥1.97 million, about €20,000, that is the income
per person of older person.
If we look at the total general household, per person income is 2.07 million yen (17,000 Euros). So,
there is not much of a difference between the two.

Economically speaking, they are not sovulnerable. However, there is a very big income gap. One out of seven people is relatively poor inJapan, that’s for the general population. But, in terms of older people, it’s one in four people whoare considered poor.
32

Also, there are an increasing percentage of older people who are becoming homeless. As it has
been introduced prior to my presentation, employment rate is high in Japan, but it is because people
have to work in order to make a living. Also, there are people who work for jobs that they do notprefer.
As you can see at the bottom slide, starting from the left hand side, there is a column for engineers.
Older people are working less as engineers and other white collar jobs, but there are a greaternumber of older people working for agriculture.

Some people look for future potential in

agriculture, but they are mainly retired people in rural Japan who are supporting their household
agriculture.
Many of the older people are not working in jobs that they prefer, and also their needs vary. There
are people who work and there are people who do not work. There are people who participate involunteer activities, senior seminars and things, and there are people who want to participate insuch activity. And, there are people who do not want to participate, and also who do not participate
in spite of the fact that they want to, and so forth.
In terms of employment and social activity, it’s very difficult to balance the two.

That’s thesituation of older people in Japan. It’s either work or social activity. You have to select one out of
the two, and it’s very difficult to do both in balance, and that is probably because of the employment
system that we have in Japan. The situation and the conditions are very strict.
In terms of work, there is an extension of the retirement age or reemployment, and so forth. Whenan extension of retirement age is taken, most of the time it’s by those who used to be managers andthey are reemployed as general employees. That leads to a very subtle human relationship, andthis also brings about various difficulties in terms of willingness to work and in terms of the older
workers’ physical conditions.
That’s for employment, and then there is social activity. In Japan, the baby boomers do not havevery much connection with the community that they belong to. And, for them, after retirement orin any time of their life, they are less likely to get any satisfaction from just joining any social
activity. But, the survey done by the Japanese Cabinet Office and the Internal Affairs Department
show that their needs are very high for volunteer activities or social activities.
In Japan, amongst the older people, if we look into the social activity and employment horizontally,
and the labour intensiveness – high or low, vertically, it’s very difficult to find an environment where
you earn money and also be involved in a social activity.
33

Several years ago, I did a survey on older people. In 1998 December, the NPO Act was established,
and at that period, they supposed that when the baby boomer’s generation retire, an event that wasthought to be very difficult to cope with or happen. We did the survey at Yokkaichi City, a pretty big
city for 3000 people and asked what kind of activity they are engaged in, and what kind of a future
they had in mind? The result was as we had forecasted, they said that “I will play golf, watch TV
and drink.” Most of the people answered in this way. So, they had not considered what theywanted to do after retirement.
Because of this survey, after 10 or 20 years they will have to retire and they will need to seek for or
join some social activity within their community. They will realize this reality, especially for about
half of the people who responded to this questionnaire. Furthermore, we did another survey intheir homes and their job places. We interviewed them regarding their history and the skills thatthey have. We also asked them further on what they really want to do. So, with regard to the
Yokkaichi City, we found out that the social needs were very high amongst these responders, but thebottleneck was the economic aspect. They wanted to engage in social activities but the pension
was insufficient to make their living. So they needed some kind of part-time job or some financial
support.
Further on, we further asked them how much they think they will earn and how much they wanted
to earn. There was a great difference as to how much they felt they would earn and how much theywanted to earn. The difference between the two was about ¥62,000 (540 Euros). So, it will beworking 4 or 5 days a week. If they can fill in the gap of ¥62,000, then that will lead them to a life
where they can participate in a social activity while earning money; they can balance the two
activities.
If it was something that would make this possible, I thought the program would be worth doing.
For the past few years, I have been working on this project and did some survey. What would be
the kind of work integration social enterprise that will be viable in Japan?
I have started my survey 3 years ago. In my survey, my colleague does a research on EMES in
Europe, he is also a member of EMES and so we tried to compare Japan and Europe in terms ofsocial enterprises. So that’s what we try to do. But, at the very beginning, we faced a very big
challenge; a WISE entity does not have a corporation qualification, so we had to start off with thedefinition of WISE or Work Integration Social Enterprise, and that was where we had a great
problem.
This is also being discussed in Europe. There are two categories in a broad sense. The one is
NPO-related approach and another approach which is cooperative-type approach. So, there are34

two types of social enterprises, that’s the case in Europe.
In Japan, NPO can cover many, many types of entities, and so we decided to take the cooperative
approach, that is we decided to do a survey mainly on cooperatives. Actually, there are two entities
which we targeted. One is a workers’ collective and another is workers’ co-op. As a result of this,we were able to reach a very interesting conclusion.
The so-called WISE has three kinds of value, and the main value is the labour inclusiveness. Thisis mainly targeted for persons with disabilities. The disability level and the willingness to work
were surveyed, and jobs were available that can accept them based on these different levels. Also,
the environment supports such labour.

Also, there is a governance system, which is very

democratic. In order to gain the understanding of the community, the community members arealso a member of this entity, and by including such community people, various needs can identified.
And by providing service and goods to those needs value added service provision can be created.
And this value-added service provision can lead to volunteers or donation of goods. By receivingsuch donation, income can be secured. And, that can lead to making a living. By doing so, the life
can be supported and also the willingness to work can also be supported.
These three values exist and these three values correlate with each other in a very close way.
Naturally, however, the balance of the three values is very difficult. Horizontally is the level ofparticipation, the formal level of participation whether you are just participating in daily meetingsor whether you are participating in the decision making. Vertically, we have the wage level. At the
top right indicates higher pay, but there is no entity that belongs to top right.

So, high

participation, high wage rate does not exist.
Kawasaki Soap Plant, at the centre of this graph, is an example where they were capable forreceiving support through the Law for Promoting Independence among Persons with Disabilities.
Through this law, the Plant is guaranteed funding to pay wages, but they can only hire persons with
only certain kinds of disabilities. Therefore, in order to hire any person regardless of disability type,the Plant had to forgo the government support and survive on their own.
What I realized is that rather than achieving public participation, in other words, making sure each
person had voting rights in a cooperative, many cooperatives focused on making sure that they canprovide an environment where they can accept lot of people to engage in jobs which suited theircapability. A higher cost was placed in this goal.
Due to the lack of time, I will give you the conclusion. The problem is that within the governance ofservice provisions found in the market mechanism or through commissioning a contract using
35

public funds, social values such as the provision of an inclusive environment are not identified as
basic values. These are not found in the service contracts using public funds.
A consideration for future research is besides evaluating the added value of these services, how toevaluate the social value of the organisation is something that needs to be studied.
Lastly, I’d like to let you know that cooperatives which had more members attending their formal
meetings were more likely to create an environment which pursued improved productivity and havea staff with higher motivation. Even though the productivity will be lower, the morale, motivation,
and willingness to participate in society were extremely high. In particular, workers’ collective,
which started off with a co-op, had only a network with certain entities. But, people who hire more
people with disabilities or marginalized people were able to create a better network.
In the past 20 years, 99% of the workers’ collectives consisted of mostly housewives. But byimplementing the WISE model, the organisation itself began to change and undergo a reform.
Therefore, I think it is an entity which holds a lot of hope for balancing older adults’ wish toparticipate in work and social participation, and should be increased in the future.
These are the two challenges for the future, and one is that the network between the community
and the various agencies is very important. In Europe, they call it “infrastructure,” while in Japan
it is called “chukan shien soshiki” for such go-between. Another is whether the output values ofsocial inclusiveness or social participation can be identified as a success measure for achieving
public capital. Whether terms like social value or social clause can be included as consignments inthe various commissioning of contracts and agreements are being pursued. I am also interested instudying further on this issue. Thank you very much.

36

Panel Discussion
Chair: Li-Mei Chen
Associate Professor, School of Human Welfare Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University【Chen】 My name is Li-Mei Chen, and I am on faculty at the School of Human Welfare Studies
here at Kwansei-Gakuin University, and I would like to thank my colleagues for giving me thisopportunity to moderate this discussion. I’m grateful and humbled to be in the presence of mycolleagues and friends from the EU.
The way I am going to moderate this discussion is I’m going to ask each one of you a question, andthat’s how I would like to go about it. Then, in the end, I would like to leave about 10 minutes to
ask the audience for any questions or comments to our discussants.
Since we are kind of short on time, I would like to go ahead and ask the first question and it goes to
Ms. Päärendson. I was very interested in your presentation and especially you gave some hints ofways to sustain the social security system such as delaying the retirement of the baby boom
generation and increasing migrant workers and so forth. One of the things you mentioned wasthat we have to think of policies in terms of inter-generational terms, and I think that’s very
important and Professor Fujita mentioned that younger generations as well as older generations
have to have some kind of social awareness about ageing. I was wondering what sort of policies orprograms have the EU done so far, in terms of promoting inter-generational awareness for older
adults.
【Päärendson】 Thank you very much for this question. Yes, as I mentioned inter-generational
dimension is important when we tackle ageing population issue. What we are bearing in mind isthat, for instance, we should take inter-generational aspect into account when we work out, forinstance, our employment policies, to see equal opportunities for both, for young and older workers,
also equal treatment when it comes to training for instance. In companies, also several surveys
prove this that when you put together older workers and young workers, then it’s very efficient way
how to transfer knowledge. Younger employees they can teach their older colleagues for instanceregarding ICT and other recently received knowledge, and older people for instance they can guideyounger colleagues in the field of communication with clients, because they have much moreexperience in this, and as we can see young people very often they are very good in technology but
they lack communication skills, so simple communication skills with another person but what isvery important when you sell your products for instance.
This is one example at company level for instance, how to organize it. But of course as I mentioned37

I was a bit running out of time with my presentation, but very last slide of my presentation, it was
about inter-generational solidarity. I mentioned that our – this year, whole year actually, in theEuropean Union is dedicated to this issue. So we have had lots and lots of conferences and we
spoke on how to handle positively this ageing society issue to emphasize what kind of positiveelements are coming with ageing society.
One important element here is also that, when we can’t solve only one side of the problem, wealways have to see also – when we talk about older people we have to also see what opportunities
remain for young people.
In companies, yes, also there have had several surveys and also training for managers on the best
ways to organize continuous training for diversified teams.

So it’s again young and older

employees together.
I’m not sure, if I answered your question, but these were some examples, thank you for yourquestion.
【Chen】 Thank you Ms. Päärendson. Talking about generations, I want to ask a question for Dr.
Fujita, and I really appreciated your data on older adults who are studying at the colleges for thethird age and how once they engage in lifelong learning, they can be educated to become moreproductive people. I am just wondering whether the upcoming baby boomers or the Dankai no

Sedai would also have that kind of self-awareness and also more willingness to engage in productive
ageing. I was wondering if there is a cohort difference, could you comment on that.
【Fujita】 Thank you. About the college for the third age, I think the current ageing population
will have to try hard so that they can hand those efforts to the next generation, which they can act
as a model for the next generation.
In that sense, I try to think of what will be a good translation in Japanese for the English word
“productive ageing.” When companies talk about productive, they talk about producing somethingor manufacturing something, but here, it is more like a creative activity. When I think about
Professor Butler meant to say about productive ageing, he was not talking just about the production
or making of something, but also it includes the meaning of creating something new. Just like japan,
the EU presenters have talked that this ageing society is something they too have not experienced
before. I think that’s the same for Japan and Europe.
Since this is something that we haven’t experienced in the past, “productive ageing” can be a modelof making something new that did not exist before. I think instilling the idea of productive ageing38

now. It will be very important for and greatly benefit the coming generation.
【Chen】 Yes, I guess it’s really important for us to kind of pass on the spirit of productive ageing to
the next generation and I do agree that one thing is through education.
Okay. Next, to both of you, Mr. Pater and Professor Oda. You both tackled a very ambitious topic
on pension and I respect you both on doing that. With Professor Oda’s presentation, the future ofsocial security is very dismal in Japan and I don’t know what to say about it as well. But I would
like to ask both of you, first, Mr. Pater. You mentioned about – there are pockets of older adults,
especially you mentioned women who are at higher risk of receiving adequate pension, especiallythey go in and out of the pension system because of giving birth, raising children, and providing carefor families. Along with the pension policy what other kind of policies should we simultaneously belooking at? Next, Professor Oda, you mentioned the necessity for world peace and security, but if
you can comment similarly on that issue from a Japanese perspective as well.
【Pater】 Of course, thank you very much for your question. If we talk about the position of
women on the labour market and consequently their future during the pension period when thebenefits are paid, first of all we have to take into account that the principle of equal pension meansthat the future pension for each gender will depend on the contributions paid during the working
period. That’s a general tendency appearing in majority of the EU member states. If it happensin majority of societies where still women play a dominant role taking care of children, if they takecare of children, their activity on labour market is reduced. Either because disposability on thelabour market is reduced, they have to leave the job on time to take children - to take care of themor member state does not provide enough facilities for taking care of children, kindergarten, properschools, taking care not only within few hours but longer per day. Then, they are forced by suchcircumstances to reduce to take part-time job or even to prolong maternity leave.

Even ifmaternity leaves or such types of leaves are paid in the terms of pension contributions, usually theyearn during such period of time smaller amount of pension rights, comparing to the situation they
are fully employed.
Next problem is that all family facilities providing proper care of children as well as older people issomething what helps women to earn their pension in higher level.
Next, I think also where we have to be – is very important, in European Union, women salaries arestill smaller than men salaries in the same position.

The task for member states is to fight against

such situation, however it’s a very difficult legal procedure to obtain true gender equality. So, it’s
not – everybody talks about this problem but this problem still exists. Legal provision is I think
the most important position.
39

The third reason – I would like enumerate four reasons. The third the most important in myopinion is the situation that in many member states young women have much more problems to get
the job or to get permanent job comparing to men. Employers are afraid that sooner they will leave
for maternity leave, they will get free time because of sickness of a child, etcetera, and looking very
narrow on the productivity of women, they think that this is a problem for them. Take for example
into account, very often the question of loyalty, for example women are more loyal employees
comparing to men of similar age, and they respect the employer who provide proper facilities.
The fourth question, I will give you on the base of example of my country. It’s a kind of standard
that – when there is a marriage, men and women have money, have their own household, they earn
– manage well, let’s say home budget together. But it happens suddenly that there is divorce. Ifthey share their family duties, for example, man is the person responsible to bring the majority ofmoney to the home budget, woman responsible to take care of the family. Then suddenly after
divorce, woman is lost. In Poland we have solved, in the part of the pension system, funded part ofthe pension system that after divorce the money collected, the pension money collected in thepension fund by both of them are divided between both of them. If they don’t achieve an agreement,
then the court procedure follows. So that is the tool on how to protect in such a system women if
there is a divorce. I think that these are the most important reasons. Thank you very much.
【Chen】 Thank you.
【Oda】 Before answering your question, I was listening to the comments and I thought they werevery interesting. Also in Japan, the system has changed for pension. When you have divorce, thecorporate pension that was paid for the husband can be divided between the couple. The original
pension system was only for one member in the family when the males were working and that the
women were taking care of the family. So that is how it started and this is how it has been kept.
But now, there are contradictions as we see since the society has changed and there are demands
from the part of females. And so, we see those changes also in Japan.
Also, when we talk about solidarity between generation and how we should succeed between
generations, as I also touched upon this in my presentation, the aged society used to be a minority, it
was a small portion among the population. But now it is becoming the second majority in the society.
So, no matter whether the ageing population is willing or not willing, no matter as a partner, wehave to have a solidarity or we will not be able to survive between the generations, then we have tothink of the issue of the labour, the issue of pension. We have to hold the burden together between
different generations. If we don’t do that, we won’t be able to survive in the society.
As for the handing over to the next generation, I think the current generation is enjoying the benefit.
40But, this benefit should not be the one that will become the other way that it will be a loss for the
next generation. So, for example, by extending the mandatory retirement age, if this causes a
problem that the young people would not be able to get the job, so there were some discussions andarguments about it that the young people would not be able to get a job. But when they consider
what they should do and when they become the aged population if the retirement age will be
extended and if this is realized, then the young people will be able to work when they become theaged population. So, we have to think of that it will be necessary when we consider about making
the policy. I think that should be also one issue which is very important, where we think of theinter-generation issues.
I also have a question, I talked about peace and security, not only the life of the older generation but
we won’t be able to get the good life without peace or security. There are conflicts in the world, inmany places in the world, and also if we go to the other developing nations, we find that older people
are having a very difficult life. Those are the areas that are very weak to natural disasters, andthen it is very difficult to live.
So there is a question; how much money we should spend to maintain the peace and security for theareas that there is no safety or peace. People have been investing a lot of money and if the peaceand security have been maintained that can be used for human lives, it is possible to allocate thoseinvestments to human life. Then, I think this will lead to the subject of how we should allocate thenational budget. This is not only true for Japan but also for many countries.
Without considering that if we just discuss only on the pension or the ageing society there is nobright factor, so this will not make any solutions. If the iPS cells for example will have big patents
that we will be able to sell or that if we find a big oil well maybe this would change the situation, but
without that I think just considering about the pension or the ageing society would not be sufficient.
We have to look from other aspects also.
Then, what can the older population do as a social contribution? I think in a Japanese way, we cansay they can be active as a watcher or advisor, maybe they can have lots of knowledge, so not juststudy about the how or to play around in the university for the third age but maybe they can havemore knowledge or skills that might be helpful for the society. I’m sorry I’m talking too much.
I would also like to talk about ICT, the older people, especially the current one, at least mygeneration or younger than my generation, are already familiar with ICT, so from now on I think
the older people, most of them, will be familiar with ICT, they will then become the mainstream.
So when we discuss ICT, this is for the short term issue when we discuss at this present time.
41

【Chen】 Thank you very much Professor Oda for putting light on the various topics raised so far.
I was wondering if Ms. Batut you would like to comment on what Professor Oda was mentioning.
【Batut】 Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to discuss with Professor, but I’msure that Professor could say that because he is so young. You know, at the university level I’msure you are right, but for the society as a whole, I’m not so sure, and when we talk about ICT as atool to empower the aged society, it’s for now, a lot of that have never met a computer in my country,
which is not an undeveloped country. We have huge differences between big cities and little cities
in the country. We have a lot of differences between high level and low level educated people in theuse of computers. If ICT could help in any way to enhance economy and to solve some problems
and to maintain links for older people, we have to make an effort now and train them and help themto empower this new world.
As Professor Oda said, you ought to maintain peace and security. You know, the EU has been firstcreated to maintain peace and security.

But, the original reasons of peace and security aresometimes being forgotten.
When I say that we have to rethink the whole society for now and for tomorrow that means thatmaybe we have to think of new ways to share wealth. I would underline what the Professor Oda
said about inter-generational security. Inter-generational links was our pay-as-you-go system.
That is inter-generational solidarity.

Now it is threatened by depression, recession, and by

population ageing. So maybe we have to rethink these systems, not to totally change them, but toadapt them. As Krzysztof said, it needs to keep the first pillar of solidarity alive, because if not,peace and security will be threatened. Thank you.
【Chen】 Thank you very much Ms. Batut. Anybody else want to comment on this topic?
【Päärendson】 Yes, thank you very much. If I may I would like to comment on this ICT issue. I
believe that we are not talking here only capability to send e-mails or communicate with yourgrandchildren in Skype or via Facebook. Of course, everyone can use these tools. But we use ICT
in many other sectors.

For instance, in my country in Estonia, when we launched digitalprescriptions, meaning that we saved people to go twice to see a doctor, once when you visited yourdoctor, doctor put you a diagnosis and gave prescription on certain bills. So, if you needed later onto renew this, you didn’t need to go anymore to see the doctor because thanks to this digitalprescription.

Your doctor communicated directly with pharmacy, so you only needed to go topharmacy with your IT card and pick up your medicine.
But we face lots of opposition from doctor’s side because that was something new. They had to42

start to do things differently, so this is what we are talking about when we talk educating about ICT,
because majority of doctors were also more like senior doctors and it was simply something new.
It’s the same with digital signature for instance. I must confess that I myself for the first time
when I put the digital signature I faced difficulties.
When we launched in Estonia e-voting, meaning that you don’t need to – you can participate ingeneral elections staying at home, voting at home using your IT card.

It also caused in the

beginning - it increased participation level in voting among young people but not so much among
elderly people because they simply didn’t know how to do. So they had to go to the city centre
anyway to give their vote. Thank you.
【Chen】 Yes. I think there are a lot of challenges in terms of implementing ICT, but there are a
lot of promises and effectiveness in doing so. Talking about effectiveness, I would like to go toProfessor Harada. I admire your work, especially because he always talks about social inclusion ofolder adults and so forth. Today, he mentioned about – how to evaluate these workers’ collectives
and coops in terms of including older adult workers, and I think it’s necessary for any kind of policy
or programs - evaluation is very important. I admire him for tackling by looking at social outcomesof these workers’ collectives.
My question to you is you looked at the effectiveness of these workers’ collectives but how about theefficiency as an outcome?
【Harada】 Thank you for the question. When you say efficiency compared to companies you
mean, is it more efficient in terms of cost, is that what you mean?
【Chen】 In terms of profit but also how much investment you put in and how these effective
outcomes can be brought about quicker?
【Harada】 This is an issue that I have with myself as well. For evaluating the value of suchnon-profit organisations, there are two ways, two approaches. One is, I think it was in March that
the Social Value Act was passed in the UK. In Japan we call it policy bidding where social clausessuch as equality between gender, inclusion of persons with disabilities or older personswill be
included as requirements to participate in policy bidding. Including such social clause, values,
aside from prices, will consider by organisations.

This is for any entities; it can be profit or

non-profits. It is a way to achieved social values from the entities giving out the contracts.
The second approach is service level agreement in UK, or negotiated contract in Japanese.
43Entities which meet certain conditions will be highly prioritized for service procurement andcontracts. With such a case, there can be problems with lack of transparency of the process orrelationships based on unfairness and favouritism. So it becomes important for an entity which istrying to get a service level agreement to publicly appeal their social values.
One of the approaches is social audit. It requires asking how much of the stakeholder’s opinions or
voices are heard, what kind of effort did you make, what kind of value you placed, and how much
was invested. It is one way to self-evaluate the organisation. But, this does not exist in Japan, so wehave to include it as a part of the process here, too.
【Chen】 I’m sure you will help us guide our way to making better social enterprises here for older
adults and other people who are socially excluded from society. We are actually running out of timeand I was wondering if any of you have questions that you would like to ask our participants today.
【Floor Participant】

Thank you.

explanation, very clear.

Question for Mr. Pater. Thank you very much for your

However, I have a very much pragmatic question.

Now, let’s say aleading country in the EU, France or Germany, how much they are getting governmental pension
now and how much they have to pay before retirement. This means not workers but university
graduates, how much they are getting and how much they have to pay when they are working?
Thank you.
【Pater】 Life is very dynamic and – Germany’s after implementation of reform of pension system.
First of all they prolonged pensionable age, additionally they have implemented small advantage
component, it’s very – it’s I think impossible; I have never met a statistic comparing the real value ofmany place into a system and taken away from the system. Especially because many EU member
states pension systems which are based on their pay-as-you-go formula are additionally subsidized
by the budget. We have some member states, for example, Denmark, when every citizen, living
certain required period of time and paying taxes in Denmark is eligible to get basic pension. Whatis above is paid on the basis of collective agreement between employers and – concluded between
employers and employees.
In our country, for example, as we have mentioned France, Germany, Poland, the principle ispay-as-you-go system. The systems are subsidized and level of subsidy is increasing year-by-year
because of demographic changes. As I have mentioned, unfortunately I have never merged studies
showing a very comparable matter, this value of money placed and taken from the system.
If you are talking about replacement ratio, then at the moment in majority EU member states it’s
above 50% of the salary. However, if you look to the studies, for example, 10 years ago, it was a44

standard that this comparison was made between the first pension and last salary. Now, thesecomparisons are done between the first pension and average salary during the whole working life
related to the – just calculated having in mind average salary because it happen, still more oftenthat 10, 20 years ago, the salary was growing year by year, and generally speaking the highestsalary was very often paid during the last working period.
Now, still more growing number of people can observe that the highest salaries they get during let’s
say their medium period of work, but at the moment more than 50, between 50% and 60% is thereplacement ratio. However, of course, looking for the future, I cannot say what will happen inaround 15 or 20 years to the future when I get pension, if this replacement ratio is kept or not. To
save certain level of independence in some member states the funded components were
implemented. But there are too many reasons having – on the future of pension, but it’s very risky
to estimate.

Of course, governments are making estimation.

But you know that if you are

depending on assumptions you take you can prove that the future replacement ratio will be higher
than 60% or lower than 40 depending on what assumption you take.
【Chen】 I’m sorry we are running out of time, so I would like to give other people a chance to talkand ask questions. Anybody else has a question? Laure would you like to share us a data from
France?
【Batut】 I want to, as you said, the answer of Krzysztof was very complete. So, on this question
in France, the speaker asked for the university, I understood, university professors, in France they
are civil servants, so they are integrated in the public system, which is now component of two
pillars; one, the main part is pay-as-you-go system if you like, something similar. The second pillar
is now done by your own spare of money, you can choose in the private system or some of otherpublic systems. That means that when you go to retirement, your pension represents more or less
50% of your activity salary for – I speak only for civil servants, and so it depends on your upgrade
during your life, your working life, the level you have reached, and it is calculated till now on thelast 2 years of activity. That means that more or less you know that when you will be retired you
have half means to live than in your activity life. It concerns only civil servants, these two pillars,
it could be completed by your own savings. Thank you.
【Chen】 Yes, Professor Oda, please.
【Oda】 Well, half of the income, in the case of Japan, also the Japanese government is trying tokeep at least 50% of the income for the amount of the pension paid. I was given a notice of pension
and I tried to think of it in many ways. They have a very complicated way of calculating process, but
it doesn’t reach 50% of my income, while the government is saying that they are maintaining at
45

least a line of 50% of the income. It doesn’t really meet the actual sentiment. The EU member
states, I have a question to Pater, do you have – don’t think about introducing common pension
system or a pension union, you don’t have that kind of discussion in EU member states?
【Pater】 I think it is impossible to have in the EU – even in member states we have different
systems for different groups. Laure has mentioned about civil servants in France. In Poland, we
have separate system for military services, police, military, firemen, etc. We have different – tosome degree different system for prosecutors, different system for miners, so many different
systems. First of all in the EU we have systems based on pay-as-you-go formula. But, manysystems are based on taxes, as I have mentioned in Denmark.
Taxpayers are getting the pension paid for everybody where everything what it’s about is based onagreements between employees and employers, very well developed system, similar to Netherlands.
I cannot imagine the situation, and demographic situation, different in different member states.
You remember I have compared Ireland on one hand, Germany on the other side, no possibility tocreate joint system.
【Chen】 I guess that’s that. Ms. Päärendson, very quickly.
【Päärendson】 Yes, thank you. Just a word, you know, when you think of Europe never think it
as a whole, think that we are 27 members, all different 27 cultures, all different. But we like tolive together.
【Chen】 Thank you very much. I think that we must think about that when you talk about the
EU. Anybody else have any questions or discussions? We have 3 minutes.
【Floor Participant】 Shall I stand up, can I ask a question? You just mentioned that there are 27
member countries in the EU and so I think each one have different situation. Now, you are talking
about solidarity between different generation, and in your countries since you have the recession
and the younger generation and they will need employment and also extending the ageing
population, do you have any understanding between different generations, does ageism, exist in
your countries? It is becoming very severe in Japan, but what about ageism in your countries?
【Chen】 Anybody? Mr. Pater?
【Pater】 Of course, crisis has brought many problems. But I think that we don’t observe, even I
have had opportunity to have a look at Spanish and Portuguese labour market, countries touchedby the crisis with high unemployment rate among young people. I have never seen any countries
46

creating or showing problems in relations between generations. Their negative comments are
addressed not to us for example, older people, but towards the government who is not – thegovernments which are not acting in enough for measures to provide employment.
There are some if we look into public opinion inquiries, there are some bad opinions among, let’s say,national or member state societies in the relation to the other member states. Because, when thecrisis is the solidarity based, solidarity principle between values member states require in fact, let’s
say richer countries should help countries in trouble. Because also of media, many people in richer
countries don’t understand exactly, especially they sometimes compare their financial situation andtheir standard of life and if they see that in spite of the crisis their standard of life is still lower thanin the countries touched significantly by the crisis.

People don’t think that society in the countries,

touched by crisis was forced to reduce their living standard significantly, but they still compare to
their level, but nothing between generations.
【Päärendson】 Thank you very much. Thank you for your question. Could we comment why
there is so high unemployment of young people? Very often it’s the matter of mismatch of skills.
So the skills what young people have are not in demand at labour market for the moment. With
crisis anyway there are fewer jobs available. So if we compare now the position of older person andyoung person, then companies prefer to have older person, because he or she has experience to work.
Young people don’t have experience to work and very often their skills are not matching to the needs.
So, with crisis, we have understood that actually education system is something what we need toreform enormously to make it work more for labour market. To make it better for young people but
also to allow older people to get re-trained if it’s needed. Thank you.
【Chen】 I’m sorry, we are running out of time and we have to end here. I would like to thank allof you for this wonderful discussion and thank you to the audience for participating today, thankyou very much.

47

Closing Remarks
Akira Ichikawa
Associate Professor, Institute for Industrial Research, Kwansei Gakuin University
Thank you very much for your participating to the workshop entitled, ‘Ageing Societies in Europe
and Japan.’ In Europe and also in Japan, we have commonalities which are – we are advanced
nations, but we have an issue which is common to both of us as well. And so, the issue of ageing
society should not be taken just as a negative issue but we should also consider positive values inthese ageing societies in order to consider this as a win-win matter. In taking this kind of approach,I think this seminar was very significant.
Today’s workshop was hosted by the EU Institute Kansai and also the Kwansei Gakuin University
branch and also the European Economic and Social Committee and also it was co-sponsored by the
Kansai Economic Federation and also Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kansai Productivity
Centre, EU Association, and also the School of Human Welfare Studies at Kwansei Gakuin
University.
I would like to thank all of these people concerned and also I would like to extend our gratitude witha great applause to all of the participants here in front of us, the panelists and the speakers in frontof us. Thank you very much. This closes our 16th International Workshop.

48

EUIJ-Kansai International Workshop
Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan
Active and Healthy Ageing - Social and Economic Challenges
Appendix Contents
Session 1: Potential Opportunities and Possibilities of an Ageing Society
Eve Päärendson
President of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan: Active and Healthy Ageing – Social and Economic
Challenges……………………………………………………………………………………………

p.50

Ayako Fujita
Professor, Dean of Psychology, Koshien University
Professor Emeritus, Osaka University

Beyond Ageism to Productive Ageing in Super Ageing Society Japan………………………

p.53

Session 2: Pension System in the EU and Japan
Krzysztof Pater
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

Challenges Facing European Pension Systems…………………………………………………

p.56

Toshikatsu Oda
Professor, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University

Challenges facing Japanese Pension Systems……………………………………………………

p.60

Session 3: Employment and Social Participation of Older Adults
Laure Batut
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

ICT and Active Ageing: Continuing True Life by Working, Connecting, Helping…………… p.65
Kohki Harada
Associate Professor, College of Community and Human Services, Rikkyo University

The Systemic and Social Requirements of Social Enterprise’s Role in Supporting New
Possibilities for Mutual Support in an Ageing Society…………………………………………

p.70※You can get all the original PPT files in colour from the international workshop through our
website; http://euij-kansai.jp/publications#publication2
49

Session 1: Potential Opportunities and Possibilities of an Ageing Society

Ageing Societies in Europe and Japan: Active and Healthy Ageing– Social and Economic Challenges
Eve Päärendson
President of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

50

51

52

Beyond Ageism to Productive Ageing in Super Ageing Society Japan
Ayako Fujita
Professor, Dean of Psychology, Koshien University
Professor Emeritus, Osaka University

53

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55

Session 2: Pension System in the EU and Japan

Challenges Facing European Pension Systems
Krzysztof Pater
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

56

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Challenges facing Japanese Pension Systems
Toshikatsu Oda
Professor, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University

60

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Session 3: Employment and Social Participation of Older Adults

ICT and Active Ageing: Continuing True Life by Working, Connecting, Helping
Laure Batut
Member of the Japan Contact Group, European Economic and Social Committee

65

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The Systemic and Social Requirements of Social Enterprise’s Role in Supporting New Possibilities
for Mutual Support in an Ageing Society
Kohki Harada
Associate Professor, College of Community and Human Services, Rikkyo University

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Lecturers’ Profiles

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